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Sunday, 29 April 2012

‘ Right boyz, ‘erez what your gonna
do. Take these bitz of ragz, made special, like the surroundin’z, put ‘em on
your ‘ead, sneak right up to da ‘oomins and shoot’em up real good.’ sneared Nob
Fang Damme, pointing at the two boxes in front of him. One of the boxes
contained Shootaz, the other camouflage nets.
None of the gathered boyz moved.

‘Sneakin’? Ain’t that a bit...not orky Boss. I
want to thump ‘em, not play hide ‘en sneak with ‘em.’ A boy named Wortzod
replied, clearly confused.

Fang Damme roared with laughter, he had hoped
for that response. He picked up a shoota, spat on the ground, aimed at nearby
grot and fired, leaving a bloody smear where the grot had stood. ‘You boyz,
clearly ‘aven’t shot one ov dese close range. And if any ov your shoots miss,
you can thump ‘em aswell.’

At that, the boyz all surged
forward, diving at the two boxes. Fang Damme watched the chaos happily, ‘dis is
gonna be a good mob’ he thought as he watched one boy rip off another’s ear in
the frenzy, ‘a good mob indeed’.

Hi again,

So I've started a new unit, a unit of shoota boyz. I wanted these to stand out from the unit of choppa and madboyz on the battle field. I decided a good way to do this would be by adding some camoflage cloaks.

Thursday, 26 April 2012

I finished painting my homemade Trukk. I plan to make lots of these hashed together trukks, so I can (affordably) play around with Trukk spam occasionally. For a first attempt, with minimum GW bitz, I think it has turned out pretty good. It's not perfect and future trukks will have more side details to distort the vehicle silhouette, but it was good fun todo and was an interesting learning curve. It's also really sturdy, so transporting it will be super easy.

Here are the pictures:

Hope you like it. I'm going to work on Shoota boyz next, so keep your eyes peeled...though I can't promise I won't get distracted!

Tuesday, 24 April 2012

So as promised, here are some work-in-progress shots of my Trukk construction.

It began life as this tractor, which cost a grand total of 20p secondhand:

I had to dismantle it using a screw driver, and stripped it back to just the wheels:

I then set about building up the trukk using a mixture of plastic card, metal drinks can and ork bitz:

Here is the finished product, You'll notice i decided to re-attach the tractor scoop:

I also used the tractor seat, which luckily suits the ork driver suprisingly well. I added bitz from the deff dread kit to make the seat look more detailed. The bar you can see in the background was built using sprue's, wrapped in tin foil. The gunner was built using battlewagon bitz, and the grot was added to make it look a bit more dynamic:

Monday, 23 April 2012

I’ve made good progress with my Deff Dread, it’s done! I’ve only got to do the basing and it will be set to stomp on the battlefield! I’m pleased with how how he turned out, and think the rust effect worked a bit better than on the battlewagon.

Here it is:

Also on the 20/04/12 I went to Warhammer world in Nottingham for the first time.

My boyfriend and I thought we would seize the opportunity to not only stock up on some forge world goodies, but also play a game in the gaming hall. Since both of us have just finished painting 2000pts of painted Epic*, we thought we should play that, so we booked a table.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from Warhammer world, but I wasn’t disappointed.

The venue is (as you’d expect) themed around 40k, fantasy and Lotr, meaning there is a huge space marine statue, the gaming hall is flanked by castle walls, and the restaurant is themed like a dwarf tavern. There are loads of cabinets containing painted army’s and selected models, which are both impressive and greatly inspiring. The shop seemed to be well stocked with the standard Warhammer fare, and if it doesn’t have the forge world you want, then they order and deliver it to your home address for free (the postage we save pretty much paid for our train fare).
The gaming hall has ~40 tables, with some really nice terrain. The Epic terrain wasn’t the same standard as the 40k, but was okay and there was LOADS of it, which made a nice difference.

My tactic was to plough forward and take as many objectives as possible (with the Kult of Zooom! heading towards the objective on my opponents table edge), while having a good ‘ead bashin’.
I had never played against a Thunderhawk before, so was a bit worried about it. I decided to go on combat patrol with Da Blue Baron’s Bommerz to protect myself a bit. However, the Blue Baron was too busy pullin’ teeth’ and totally ignored this...

Subsequently I decided to rely on free orders only (largely Double) and advance forward. The Raven Guard advanced and gave some fire. The most dramatic event was when the Thunderhawk (containing both an assault and devastator detachments) engaged with Uzfang’s warband. I think my opponent totally underestimated the brute strength of nobz, and also didn’t notice Big Mek Iron-rust-klaw’s Brigade within supporting fire distance...so the attacking unit got completely wiped out...

Here’s a photo of the battle field after turn 1:

Turn 2:

Now close enough to give fire, the Raven Guard tried to blast the Ork’s to pieces. The problem with this was this just gave away their position! The largest ork fatalities were taken by Big Mek Iron-rust-klaw’s Brigade (which ended up with 6 blast markers) as a result of the thunderbolts and tactical squad fire. The Raven Guard tactical squad came under fire from the weakened Big Mek’s Brigade and then got charged by Uzfang’s warband, cruisin’ for some bruisin’. Amongst the injured was Uzfang himself (nothing a Big Mek can’t repair), and the entire tactical squad.

The Kult of Zooom! Reached the objective in Raven Guard’s deployment zone. The whirlwind detachment decided to take on Big Mek Thud-ock’s Stompamob, with no success, and in the confusion the Stompamobs returned fire to a vindicator squad, reducing its number to a single (and broken) vehicle .

Here is a photo of the assault in turn 2:

Turn 3:

The final turn saw the Raven Guard bikes making a mad dash towards the objective the Kult of Zooom! Where holding, only to be charged and wiped out by the delighted Ork bikers.
In an attempt to take an objective the remaining whirlwind unit rushed towards the objective in the ork deployment zone, with one vehicle crashing into a wall in the process. In response to the whirlwinds daring behaviour, Da Blue Baron’s Bommerz flew over head, blowing the two whirlwinds to smitherines. In the desperation (and after the Thunderbolts failed to damage their targeted unit), the last remaining Raven Guard unit, a vindicator, destroyed by Big Mek Thud-ock’s Stompamob.

Conclusion:

A victory for the Ork’s! However since we are both relatively new to Epic, we both learnt from our (many) mistakes, making it valuable for both players. I learnt that clustering units together to benefit from supporting fire is AWESOME, and also it’s important to concentrate from the beginning on the victory conditions.

*My Boyfriend, Mike, has a really nice blog which details his Epic army.

Saturday, 21 April 2012

Hi everyone,
Sorry for the gap in posting, I've had a hectic week. But I'm back in the blogging zone now. Today I thought I'd share my Nobz. My Nob unit has never disappointed in game, its fun, resilient and packs one heck of a punch.
So here they are:

Saturday, 14 April 2012

I enjoy most aspects of war gaming, including collecting, assembling, painting, playing and chatting about tactics. However my least favourite gaming associated activity is list writing. The reasons for this fall into 3 broad categories:

1. OVERWHELMENT: When writing a list, particularly an ork list, there are a lot of options. Decisions range from large (‘what heavy support choices should I include?’), medium (‘what unit size works best?’) to relatively small (‘what armour should I equip my character with?’). Generally these choices are obvious, but often there is conflict. I always find choosing my HQ hard. I also find myself being torn between writing a list based on fluff, competency, models I like and price both points and money wise very difficult.

For instance I love Killa kans, both the models and fluff. However the models cost a lot to buy, occupy a heavy support slot AND are (arguably) less effective than a battlewagon with a deff rolla. Killa kans also work best with a Big Mek+Kustom force field, which gobbles up (at least) one HQ choice, but I really like the thought of a Warboss and a Big Mek with a shokk attack gun. So what do I do? Go with what I ‘like the thought of’ or what will synergise most? And what if I have already bought a Wazdakka Gutsmek model off ebay for a bargain price? = Overwhelming.

2. DISAPOINTMENT: That horribly disappointing feeling you get when a list you thought would be really fun/kick ass/evenly matched against army ‘x’ (delete as appropriate), just isn’t. The tankbusta’s really are rubbish compared to lootas’, those nobz you gave heavy armour got smashed by Grey Knights and you regret the lack of cybork armour and in retrospect that massive unit of meganobz on foot are WAY too slow. Although this feeling is generally short lived and the right ‘wow that list was hilariously bad’ attitude/tweaking to your list can remedy it, for me at least, disappointment is still an issue.

3. Finally, JUDGEMENT: This is what generally gets to me the most. I know I shouldn’t care what people think, but the ‘what kind of idiot would include unit ‘x’ in a ‘y’ list?!’ really gets to me. I’m not sure if this results from being female, and feeling the need to prove myself as a capable gamer, or if it’s a widespread feeling, but either way it bugs me. If I want to have 20 gretchin and fork out for 2 Runtherders, I want to do that for a reason (probably one associated with modelling opportunity or fluff). I certainly don’t want people thinking I’m stupid for not taking 19 and saving myself the cost of the extra herder. When I played Space wolves regularly, I would run 2 rune priests only one with living lightning. This wasn’t because I was unaware that living lightning was awesome, but rather I preferred a bit of variety. If I lose a game I have no problem admitting my list might not have helped but I’d don’t want people assuming because I took that list I can’t play 40k and THAT’s why I lost. Judgement narks me.

So, am I the only one out there that feels like this? What aspect of war gaming is your least favourite aspect? I would be really interested in hearing about other people’s opinions on this :)

Also, this is the first ‘opinion’ blog post I’ve done, feedback on if you’ve enjoyed/hated it would also be appreciated.

I've been working on my unit of Nobz. I've played a few games with nobz and they have always stole the show with their brutality. However, they key member of the unit is without doubt the Painboy. He not only gives the unit Feel No Pain, but is also a great model. I unfortunatly got the finecast version, so had to replace the finer bits of the syringes with paperclips...but I think it was worth the effort.

So I thought it might be nice to explain how I take the photo's of my models.

The camera I use is the Fujifilm FinePix S1800. I bought it a couple of years ago (just before the tax increase on electric items) from amazon for £125.

When I take photo's of models I never use a flash. This is because it casts heavy shaddows on the models and generally bleaches out detail. I set the camera on the macro mode and have the camera on automatic (the settings are shown below...but with the exception of no flash and macro the camera chooses these not me :).

I set up an area to take photos by creating a 'background' by using boxes.

Next I cover the area in a sheet of light gray fabric. I used to use this fabric as a gaming mat. Its a good colour for photo background because it doesn't reflect the light too much and the texture looks nice in the photos.

Because I don't use the flash on my camera, I use a desk lamp to cast light on the models.

When taking the photos I position the lamp as close to the models as possible, angled slightly to face the front of the model.

So today I thought I'd share some of my Madboyz. I know Madboyz no longer have rules, but I thought they would be a cool modelling opportunity. Also the fluff for Madboyz is awesome, and too good to refuse!

Madboyz are Orks who's behaviour is ‘as mad as a helmet full of stinger-squigs’. They enjoy collecting things, lashing buckets and other pointless objects they’ve found to their bodies, and carry these ‘treasures’ happily into combat. The presence of Madboyz is thought to be lucky, but often this ‘luck’ is comprimised when they decide on having a shouting contest during a night raid, or when a frantic madboy decides his best hat is in another orks hut. Unpredictable and accredited with the same strength as a orkboy Madboyz antics often confound the foe. – Fluff taken from the Ork 40k Codex by Phil Kelly.

My plan is to have a suicide Truk (which will be heavily converted to look suitably mad...) full of Madboyz which will storm ahead of the army, generally confuse the opponent, before finally dying happily amongst their pile of treasures.

So, fluff aside, here are some pictures of how the squad is coming along: